Full Title: Game 3001 Professional Brief 1 ) Fruit Cart Environment - Creating Textures in Painter and Designer (Week 2) (10/10/2022)

Texturing - Creating Alphas)

After the bake I realised just how much height data and additional details I would need to bring out on fruit and varying other meshes. And so as I went along I quickly adapted and made a bunch of alphas for these purposes. Majority of these were grey scale edited photographs of the fruit with values being brought in different angles for surface texture/parts. This helped sell the illusion of depth and variation of varying positions of the fruit however in the future I may simply choose to add this onto the high poly using sculpting software. Since it would bake the detail and save a bit of time perhaps in the long run of texturing. Moving onto my coloured alphas which I made to replicate logos of the two prominently colourful crates “Eros” and “Sungold”. I was luckily able to find more reference online on these crates and companies before I headed into making vector shapes in Photoshop. With additional brush strokes across to sell a more hand painted feel. This treatment of painting I also applied to my signage for Old Man Morris’ stall sign. I used a font base for sizing and placement and then wrote over the top in my best old man handwriting. I figured it would be a little bit fanciful as per the old timey aspect and a lot of market stalls have this very pointed design to their prices. 

Designer Material - Woven Wicker)

I began the material with a few strands of shapes provided by the Designer that looked very similar to actual weaves. They were bunched up so I used a lot of nodes to straighten them out and then apply them in a diagonal manner like a pattern. I then had to mask out some of these when following a more vertical weave down since it wasn't that tightly packed in that direction. 

Through a few attempts I was able to bring this forward and add a little bit of roughness since it would be relatively light material. I fuzzed up this map since it would give that textural fuzz feeling to it as well as in the base colour map. I used the tiling tools a lot to figure out with “spacebar” how the maps would look in a longer orientation. Unfortunately I know that the lower resolution may crunch some of these details but I hope it survives somewhat cleanly through tri-planar projection.

Designer Material Cart Wood)

The wood nodes were a lot easier to produce since I have been attempting to replicate this material over a couple of projects. I began using a lot more warping and masking effects to break up the streaks that you can project with typical noise maps. And had a lot of seeds to edit and changeup how noisy the pattern projects with since I know it might suffer tiling issues should it be too broken vertically. 

For AO I used a light occlusion across a similar grey map of the values since there aren't too big crevices for the wood; it's primarily based on tone. In my roughness I also opted for quite a dry sleek look since the cart would be exposed a lot to the elements and might not be fully clean/polished as it was off the tree.

Painter Texturing - Cart)

Luckily with my diverse set of masks pre-made with vertex painting I was able to apply my wooden designer material and tweak its orientation along my UV’S with ease. I had to add additional edge wear alongside a lot of the wood with the alphas since I realised it fell too clean once again. And very predictable in a too perfect game sense. I also enjoyed dropping a few gradients alongside the base colour channels to help darken down areas that would naturally occlude/dirty close by to other parts such as the wheel cylinders and the underside of the wooden legs. My final polishes fell upon the nail alpha that would simply be added on a plane but held an important role in hiding symmetry along my material plus providing support for the realism of the planks.

Painter Texturing - Crates)

For my crates I individually worked on each crate per its own folder and delegated masks. Taking on the dark plastic first with oranges since it was easiest in colour values. I could also add the height masks on top with my alphas to play around with how dark the values had to be to bring out a realistic grain atop the oranges. Plus the finer details of the dotted stumps of which the fruits grew and dropped from. Unfortunately this crate also proved that opacity was a no go since the side angle views revealed the oranges to be completely flat. Perhaps if I had made a tiling orange material and set it up inside it would be more convincing however I did not have much geometry to work with so I will have to stick with this compromise for now. Moving onto more crates the “Sungold” and “Eros” crates each were very similar in cardboard design and so were quite easy to set out noise maps for that rough cardboard edge. For the colour logos I had to use triplanar mapping onto the corners and faces afflicted and mask out any overlap with actual fruits. Within my wooden crates I was able to export a really light variant of my crate wood to use as a light tinge onto my crates and it gave a convincing wood grain that I was able to paint metallic staples onto. 

Painter Texturing - Fruit)

For my fruit I began at first on my apples since they were the easiest to apply gradients to. Alongside speckle a bit of dotting/lining that apples have going vertically. Due to my baking previously I was able to set up easy to use Vertex Colour ID maps for my fruits and after applying a series of painting and more polishing via brush to the apple I could replicate the result on the bundle of apples. I also used my alphas to help add height detail to the top and bottom stem of the apples and many other fruits. Some more unique processes in texturing occurred during my pineapple in which I had to break down the fruit's shell-like exterior into 3 alphas. I then experimented with various tiling methods before setting on tri planar projection since it captured the pattern well along seams. Duplicating this layer helps me keep the orientation of the tri planar texture along other alphas which I added on top. With the base representing green, the middle shell as orange/brownish and the topmost layer yellow/whitish. For a final polish I decided to also paint the top and bottom of the pineapple darker since that would be the section which would interact most with the world in placement alongside the top being connected to the foliage.

Painter Texturing - Environmental Decor)

Similarly to my other texturing processes, I took the Vertex Paint maps to curate masks across the entire texture set to delegate each mesh/material to. I would have a lot of metallic in this material so I ensured to paint the value white on appropriate zones. With further painting, a lot of my textures were built up from base colouring first, roughness distribution in edge wear/noise blends and further polish with hand painting. Particularly on meshes such as signage and the thermos I added additional decals to provide branding to the maker. I was able to luckily recreate and apply an old logo of the “Stanley” thermos before they rebranded to a more modernised look to keep that old timey 1960s aesthetic. For my signage I used my previously hand painted alphas for pricing and Old Man Morris’ fruit cart brand which displayed prices in shillings, placing the time period to prior decimation of the UK currency. I also spent a copious amount of time calculating how much fruits should be priced upon during the time period and inflated prices per the very limited import possibilities at such an early commercial period. Moving back to texturing however I was able to paint a lot of rust and wear into my assets minus the book, pencil and cane of which I wanted to be less affected due to their importance to the old man and placement at higher elevation. 

Final Thoughts:

In terms of development thus far the texturing process was quite time consuming in terms of problems encountered during the baking process. I also feel I would have gotten a lot more out by applying further surface detail in Zbrush to my high polys rather than staying entirely in 3DSMax with turbosmooth. However with time constraints I will consider this process for the secondary future brief to get more unique surface detail. On the other hand I learnt a lot about height alpha detailing in Painter and have definitely sped up my workflow in mask generation. I also gained a better understanding of roughness values in my work and am continuously working to improve my materials as they go on. I may have to apply a few more polish passes after getting some feedback later on.

Full Title: Game 3001 Professional Brief 1 ) Fruit Cart Environment - UV Unwrapping and Vertex Painting  (Week 2) (10/10/2022)

UV Unwrapping)

I began by unwrapping one of my most difficult to pack meshes, the fruits. I knew that to conserve UV space I could easily symmetry the fruits across however I realised it would make them more obvious. And will most likely add to the texturing process to attempt to cover the obvious seams. So I added edge cuts diagonally so that when forward facing at most angles it shouldn't appear too oblivious to the seamline. Packing them to the lower of the corner as best as I could. With my planned sheet previously, I knew the fruits budget would have to be split into 2 and so would share both fruits/crate fruit sections respectively. For my other UV spaces the cart fit snugly on its own map with minor grievances for corner sectors that refused to flatten. Minor UV problems also arose when packing the extra props across on a combined map as I still had to delegate enough space for texture bleed which may be a minor issue in the engine. 

Vertex Painting)

One of my favourite steps when preparing high polys for export is assigning a copious amount of highlighter coloured vertex paint across meshes. For some fruits I kept the same expected colour but for more varying masks on meshes such as the cart I went full clown mode on colours. As the further away it is from another hue the easier it will prove to pickout and mask in texturing. This further will help when texturing a lot of objects at the same time such as the decorative extras with areas as the banner having to be scattered to fit. With a lot of UV islands being unfortunately packed/flattened cylinders taking up more space than expected.

Texturing - Baking the High to Low Poly)

Unlike my other processes, baking came with a couple of issues. A lot of  them were relatively easy to solve as it was either camera distance or clipping artifacts due to the meshes being too close themselves. However a few fruits refused to give smooth bakes and appeared over-flattened into the crate below, some even bleeding into more of the crate sides. I struggled to find the culprit but uncovered that when texturing exporting a lot of separate individual high poly helped as it may have made it easier to calculate later down in passes than one big bulk. 

Full Title: Game 3001 Professional Brief 1 ) Fruit Cart Environment - Low Poly and High Poly Modelling (Week 2) (10/10/2022)

Modelling Cart)

I began modelling the cart as it was already very well built from my blockout stage in terms of pre-existing geometry. I was easily able to round up corners, divide the cart into suitable sectors for symmetrical application and apply more detail. I also took this time to add appropriate edge loops for trimming down vertices on corners. By using the manual cut tool I could link up a lot of corners in a more triangular manner. 

I also realised I had a lot of edge faces that underneath the cart legs and wheels could be removed to save further on the budget. However for the time being I kept this detail on as if it may affect baking negatively. In past projects baking has always held a plethora of problems due to the difference of geometry in open/exposed faces. Furthermore I try to seal up corners and keep geometry as similar as I could. With my personal time constraints of the project I also realised I didn’t have a lot of time for retopologizing with the modelling process and hence opted for the edge cut turbosmooth workflow. As further discussed down below.

Modelling Crates)

Unlike my cart the crates I had as low poly were too low poly and had strange geometry used to blockout. So I opted to instead start from scratch and pull out vertices from a cut plane. I placed a reference to help provide the overall shape and then cut a square into it with extruded edge lines. I then further shaped these back to make the side with symmetry to provide a perfect box like crate shape. For the majority of my low poly crates all that was left was to apply a shell modifier and bring up the middle sector with a small amount of fixing corner topology. To create my high poly I would copy the low poly, manually apply more loops with swift loop to edges and hard corners, then apply a strong turbosmooth modifier to get a higher polygonal look. As my goto quick hi-poly method this worked a charm across most of my crates with matching geometry for baking.

To help cut down as much as I could on the tricount. However with more unique assets such as the plastic crate which held more of a bar like design, I used cylinders as my base. And copied them across in rows to give the full bar like effect. Symmetry as a modifier helped ensure that it was exactly the same all around the mesh. As the high poly tends to sometimes mess up when using modifiers such as turbo smoothing with bad geometry.

Modelling Fruits)

As I had a lot of fruits I knew I had no time to waste so I used a low poly sphere as base. For more higher ridged fruits such as the plum apple, green apple and lemon I extended ringed loops more up the shape and pulled the top down. Luckily more rounded fruits and pomegranates had little change in low poly meshes from the spherical base. However I have to mention I did consider using a past favourite, spherical cube, in which you add a spherify modifier to a cube. Making an overall better topological sphere. But this approach added too many tris in a manner I could not cut down. So I instead went back to spheres. My high polys once again followed the edge cut + turbo smooth pipeline as I knew a lot of height depth and further detail can easily be textured on. And the main purpose for my high poly fruits was to get the shape and overall roundness across.

Modelling Pineapple Foliage)

My favorite part of the modelling thus far is definitely the pineapple foliage. Unfortunately I knew I didn't have too much available to make in this short project. So I opted to use simple leaves in the baking pipeline to produce the required foliage. I first extruded a plane and cut into it like a typical long leaf would be. However I used both turbo smooth and vertice editing to pull back the smoothness and create a higher polygonal leaf. Which I further bent with a spline path delegated in an arc motion. I attached the mesh using a much loved modifier called “Path Deform” onto this spline creating that arced pineapple fruit effect. Furthering on I arranged a bundle of these leaves using the “Align” tools in 3DSMax to speed up manually doing it myself. As time was of the essence. However I did not entirely skip out on having to manually adjust this collection of leaves as they were very boringly arranged in the same rotation. So I went to dress and style this arrangement higher and taller with a FFD 4 (Free Form Deform) cage modifier. After a few attempts (my version of 3DSMax crashed with the amount of polys of said leaves) I got a result I was quite happy with to move on.

Modelling Falling Fruit)

To model the high poly fallen fruit models, I simply attached a bunch of MassFX Rigid Body modifiers to a bundle of fruits and crates. I had to ensure both the crate was low poly and simple enough for collision calculations alongside notes as a static mesh. This way the only simulation occurring was the fruit. Alongside this the crate could be reused as it was simply a mesh and I quickly went across modifying scales and dropping a bunch of my high poly fruit meshes into appropriate crates and/or planes. To help fit on meshes I had a set of interchangeable planes that I planned to add to the wicker wooden crates so I would minimise geometry and UV space by having interchangeable middle parts rather than unique sets of the same crate. 

Modelling Lantern, Pencil and Book)

Moving onto my environmental props, I decided to be a bit more lenient on geometrical constraints. I knew that since the crate and fruits had to be budgeted very harshly I could distribute a bit more interest and tri count into the surrounding environmental props. So I opted to reuse my blockout lantern, in turn optimising and welding a lot of the geometry down. Whilst the book and pencil on the other hand I had to model out of basic shapes from scratch with cylinders and boxes respectively. I found the book to be a tad harder as my reference had beveled metallic edges and I was unsure how well the geometry would bake down in a more slanted/flattened manner. Regardless I also decided to take a gamble with my low poly pencil, instead opting to bake it down completely flat. Much like foliage geometry as the majority would not be viewed from other angles I figured there was little point in making a  small unique model for this pencil if it could be instead a plane with fake baked depth. I also added a lot of vertex painting to make it easier to drop masks in the texturing process with different material values e.g. shiny lead vs middle hardwood.

Modelling Thermos, Cap and Crate)

Onto more props I took to initially modelling the thermos out of base cylinders that had a slight elevation at the top. As old style thermos bottles had a prominent vacuum hence the larger top. I then further dragged the loops to a close with a smaller cap which could then be selected and duplicated across to make a lid. With provided rescaling, it fits very well with a shell on both sides similar to a typical travelling cup lid. Afterwards the high poly was easy to tackle as the geometry was very similar apart from more refined ridges and a few screw marks atop the lid to help keep the lid in place as per reference. During my crate however I opted to make all the geometry bit by bit with boxes that were stacked together like nailed planks. Matching with an underside support beam per side and symmetry to assure a smooth geometrical finish. Finalizing with my cut edge turbo smooth workflow as usual for treating similar geometrical high poly meshes.

Modelling Cane, Sign and Banner)

My final lot to model for my environment set was some more of Old Man Morris’ belongings and banners. The cane followed a similar workflow to many of my foliage work , using path deforming after a cylindrical/plane mesh was made. The spline was an arc that helped define the grip sector of the handle with a small fanciful extrude atop to make for a fancier design. I believed this would also give a nicer silhouette/shape than a typical rounded cane. My signage was luckily perfect from the blockout and ready to cut edge turbo smooth as I have previously. However as you may notice it is only half of what it is regularly, as I am trying to save on UV space I will have to symmetry this across as a model. But with the future engine of UE4 in mind I plan to use shader tricks/decals to cover any oblivious symmetry. My banner also followed a similar workflow of turbo smoothing with swift cut edges however I wasn't worried about symmetry due to the nature of the flags having to be symmetrical anyway. 

Full Title: Game 3001 Professional Brief 1 ) Fruit Cart Environment - Greyboxing, Engine Lighting and Texture Planning (Week 1) (07/10/2022)

Developers Note:

Hello and welcome back! This is my second post and I must say I have dove quickly in with development but not so quickly with my posts as such I will be regularly updating the week in ⅔ chunks at the end of said week to ensure I gather all evidence and notes of my work. (I’m also not the best at quick regular updates)

Greyboxing Blockout Modelling:

After settling on my good ol british scene I took to modelling the cart itself simplistically/blocky to help greybox the shape and scale. I placed a tall cube in my 3DSMax scene and named it Human Scale at 5”7 to help measure up the cart to myself. I find it easier to model and compare by imagining/placing objects at a regular height level to myself as I suffer poorly with judging maths otherwise. Moving on I placed a reference plane in the background and used a new method of planar modelling unlike my usual second year glancing at reference style. This method is limited to having a photo at the correct angle which I managed to work around by warping the referencial brief photo to a frontish view however is something that definitely helped to piece the cart together. Moving on past the cart I used path deform and a lot of symmetry to help buff out appropriate geometry and splines. You might see that my overall final view is quite plain and has large scale blocks on the walls, these are decal posters slots. I want to see how they fair in lighting and visualisation for myself in the world however I don't want to make decals that might be scrapped. 

Iterations and Changes:

Following the greybox I went back to my moodboard and modelled a few more elements to break up the shapes in the scene. I felt a tall market decor pole with hanging british banners would serve well against the very horizontal fruit cart. This too also lies to the walls which I have had a lot of experience making modular kits during the summertime to instance in. However a key difference is that these walls lack posters/typical market decorations as when considering lighting conditions I more so favour the nighttime aesthetic. And felt a dark street corner with but a classical oil lamp will not serve well to frame and showcase the fruit cart itself. And such I added windows like a common seller among the street, old man Morris and Sons has a wide range of sellers by setting up all around a theoretical “London”.

Setting Up UE4 Engine Lighting:

With shapes and blockout setout, minus the fruit as I had considerably chosen to leave the complicated case of baked fruits, copious amounts of smaller instances and more to the proper low poly stage, I dove into UE4. The import was smooth and unfortunate as I wish we were able to use UE5 however the engine restrictions of the lab dictate an older version of which I am familiar but wanted to brush up further in the next generation. Anyways moving on, I created a set of appropriate folders; such as Static Mesh, Materials, Textures etc to make a clean content browser for future imports. In such materials my first master material for blackout was made with colour parameters and roughness which I added to everything for a rough feel of how lighting affects the scene. Afterall I further went to post process and fog to add more of a backing colour/vignette to the diorama setup that required basic material setup. My lights were primarily spotlights as I envision the local out of scene London lamps would play a key role in setting the scenes lighting. As the final hours of the cart selling fruit before old man Morris and Sons has to go home. 

Feedback and Changes:

Following setup I got some insightful feedback from my tutor Teo, who advised me the scene felt too strongly set up. This was true as the cart was very well framed against the wall and the old man would have to wiggle beneath to get out of such a tight spot. Additionally there was a lot of noise in elements of the scene by having the lantern almost covering the cart's left side and the signage taking the right. So I split these elements out, pushed them aside to give more breathing room and titled the angles to make a realistic set piece framing the cart. I also took out one of the windows to break up the symmetry and add a proper wall to hang damaged posters of old wars for the narrative aspect. My favourites additions however have to be the cane and small old style thermos which now hang in the foreground and background helping add a little bit more character to how old man Morris spends his days selling away.

Final Thoughts:

Conclusively I have to say I love the character of Old Man Morris (and Sons) that I have created (lightly infringed in copyright as well) and picture him to be nostalgic if not a veteran for this early WW2 shenanigans. This will show in his sales and his habits. Whilst very restricted in the fruit carts design itself the environment will help fill in the gaps, and I want the player to view it as a mini game to spot what smaller details they can find next. Within a reasonable degree of polygonal counts of course.

Additionally I was able to easily map out a brief budgeting of textures in which I will split a few of the fruit maps into smaller ones to help comply within reasonable texel density. A brief note to add on that whilst I plan for them to be TRIM sheets I may go through with unique unwraps to help texture them less symmetrically and predictably for the player view should I have the UV budget. 

Full Title:  Game 3001 Professional Brief 1 ) Fruit Cart Environment - Brief, Research (Week 1) (03/10/2022) 

Welcome to the first of my developmental Blog Posts about my “Fruit Cart Environment”. I hope you enjoy and grab some cocoa. This is going to be a long read. :D

Briefs and Rationalising:

After reading all of the environmental briefs I became very interested in the “Captains Table” and the “Houdini Pub Technical Environment” briefs. Primarily for their themes more so with the Ubisoft ``Captains Table Brief '' that extended designing the table and narrative up to you. However after being told of the very shortened deadlines on these 2 projects I realised that I may be overscoping by having a new software power my secondary brief. Considering how bugs and problems will occur in things I am already accustomed to and confident in. I didn't want to risk the stress and pain of a new software being added to the mix. So with more goals in mind to polish my pre-existing skills and knowledge by putting them to the test past the summertime, I picked up the Fruit Cart brief as a starting point.

Time Management and the Professional Pipeline:

One of my most overarching challenges proves to be time management so I decided to get a headstart on this by thoroughly planning my day to day activities to ensure I have plenty of allocated time to polish this brief to completion. With added bonus days to overflow into should things take longer than expected. Another of my reasons as to choosing the quite limiting but short handed “Fruit Cart” brief was that its simplicity meant I could polish and dive into expanding the narrative of the cart itself before fully diving into a narrative design task such as the “Captains Table”.

Further on into the pipeline, I have drawn up my personal but industry equivalent of a production pipeline for environments. As usual it is important to not rush ahead and proceed all assets of the project through this pipeline so everything is on the same page of quality in development. (I also really enjoy making diagrams)

Research into Cart:

My research into the cart first began by trying to look for other standardised market carts and where the design really came from. It is no question that what is a table with added double wheels turns into a cart in the end, however a lot of these designs sprang up from the early 19th/20th century. The ones that did survive of course considering the frail building materials of wood, there could have been more standardised designs much earlier that simply didn't stand the test of time. However through this research I could narrow down better angles of the pretty poorly provided brief. And then begin to move onto gathering further research material for simpler constructs, eg the wooden crates.

Research into Fruits:

Onto the fruits, whilst the main bunch of pineapples, oranges, regular apples, kiwis were easy to identify the pomegranates and possible peach's/cherry plums atop the black boxed cardboard crate made for a harder research endeavor. Luckily however since this is a British food cart reference these fruits should be available nearby too for purchase (and snacking) during the project. The online equivalents also had very good photographic lighting for spreads/bunches which will greatly aid me in making tiling/baked equivalents of flattened fruits. However their detail may grievously hurt my tri count and so I will have to be careful later on.

Research into Environment Concepts 1 - Italy )

My first initial concept was to take the fruit and cart to Italy. I quite liked the walls and environmental architectural design of Italian streets plus the colours look amazing. Foliage might be a bit difficult to occlude since a lot of the side coloured streets are very worn in a natural way. However I soon came to realise a caveat of choosing Italy, the factor that many of the fruits might be different/unavailable as they are in the reference. And so will need some light tweaking/modifying to fit a comfy worn down market seller on the bustling colourful Italian streets.

Research into Environment Concepts 2 - Docks)

My secondary concept which I believe is much more complicated however very rewarding is the placement of the cart at a Thailand Boat Market Docks. I love the idea of floating rafts and wooden docks holding the fruit cart adrift. And I think the scenery and setting could make for a very interesting diorama. However the concept, primarily based in Bangkok would be quite difficult to draw up as I have a limited geometry/area to curate the environment. The idea of diving deeper into the technical shaders to create rippling waves and polish off the water side of natural environments however is one I will keep in mind. And may tackle my FMP. 

Research into Environment Concepts 3 - England)

My third concept lies back within England. Primarily older England, in the early 20th century. The fruit cart belongs to one old man Morrison and “sons' ' similarly akin to a play on the supermarket brand. I have quite a album of referencial pre and post historic WW2 pictures and believe the grimy grungy streets of Britain in this era would strike a good cobras against the fresh fruit. Additionally I have also done quite a lot of development into materials and texturing this era previously during the summer. And would like to apply it to a industrial brief.

Final Thoughts:

Overall considering my time restraints and predominantly treating the first of two industry briefs as a “warmup” I will strongly go forward with tackling a post war fruit cart environment scene. I've always had a fascination with the era and by indtsnacing it within Britain the fruit also makes sense to the time. However a challenge I will tackle is adding further details to explaining the story behind old man “Morris” and his son who run this cart. And their little habits/traits to setting up and selling on these grungy streets.